A word of warning: if you’re a deep-cut Marvel fan, you may want to arrive at Deadpool & Wolverine with several changes of underwear and a responsible buddy to make sure you get home okay. Perhaps pre-book an ambulance. Because this goes hard on the in-jokes and wish-fulfilment. From cameos to background Easter eggs to long-fan-ficked meet-ups, it’s a relentless onslaught of surprises designed to get audiences screaming and throwing popcorn in the air.
If you’re a Marvel-agnostic currently rolling your eyes, there’s no need. The delightful thing about this film — which is almost constantly delightful — is that it’s not just for the franchise faithful. In the past, the studio has been guilty of creating material ‘for the fans’, meaning the rest of the audience comes second. One person’s whoop-worthy moment is another person’s Google search of “who purple guy credits”. But Deadpool & Wolverine does all it can to bring everyone along for the ride, including those who don’t know their Professor X from their X-23. And it works, because the self-referential stuff is mostly decoration. The core of it is an extremely affable buddy movie, played to near-perfection by Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman.
Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are a dream together.
In a slightly clunky set-up, which is fairly baffling unless you fully concentrated during Loki, Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Reynolds) is convinced his life will never have purpose. He finds himself in the Time Variance Authority (for brevity, let’s just call them a timeline-management agency) and is told his universe is going to collapse because the loss of an “anchor being” has triggered chaotic ripples through the entire world. Deadpool believes he can save his timeline, and gain some importance, if he goes to a different reality and grabs a replacement version of that anchor being: Wolverine (Jackman). Things go wrong and they wind up in a wasteland full of banished superbeings, overseen by the very bald, very bad and telekinetic Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin, in a role that doesn’t give them enough to match the two leads’ presence).
Narratively, it's a bumpy start, but once Reynolds and Jackman are united the plot smooths out, becoming a quest to get home, and lets their bickering chemistry take centre stage. They are a dream together, both immensely comfortable in their respective characters and apparently willing to do just about anything to give the audience a laugh. Reynolds delivers gags at a mile a minute, affectionately poking fun at everything on screen, and frequently off, and pushing at both the fourth wall and Marvel’s boundaries. For Jackman, bringing his career-defining character back for a comedy encore could have been a mistake. After some real stinkers, he ended his Wolverine journey with Logan, as effective a superhero sign-off as we’ve ever seen. Thankfully, this is a triumph. While the film is ridiculous, Jackman plays Wolverine just as he always has: brimming with hurt and self-disgust. In a film with a million dick jokes, he manages to deliver a character arc that’s genuinely moving, achieving the greedy honour of a second worthy bow-out.
To speak too much of the specifics of Wolverine and Deadpool’s journey would spoil some of the enjoyment, but suffice to say, this plays all across the Marvel toybox. Director Shawn Levy has an excellent grasp of tone here. There are many scenes he could luxuriate in, preening over just what he’s managed to pull off, but he keeps it brisk and swiftly punctures anything that’s looking like it might get too self-regarding. He lands almost all the gags, including one which has to rank as the best use of a Marvel cameo ever. Everyone, whether on screen for seconds or hours, seems all-in.
As the film itself acknowledges (albeit half-jokingly), Marvel is currently “at a low point”, after a string of misfires. Deadpool & Wolverine is a strong answer to the question of whether the franchise still has life in it. It states a confident yes, and does so by putting character first and Universe second. Deadpool & Wolverine is laser-focused on its title pair and everything people love about them. There’s no eye on the next chapter. No teases of what’s to come. It’s all about right now and making sure the audience has the best time possible.
